Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Life Links 10/10/07

James Dobson talks with Sean Hannity about the 2008 election and the Republican candidates. I think Dobson is painting himself into a corner with regards to Fred Thompson. I don't think being against a Federal Marriage Amendment and playing a role in getting McCain-Feingold passed are good enough reasons not to support him, especially if he wins the nomination.

I also think prolifers need to spend more time weighing the long term consequences of supporting Giuliani if he's nominated vs. four years of Hillary as president.

Nicholas and Lola Kampf, the parents who kidnaped their daughter in an attempt to force her to have an abortion, won't get any jail time. Their daughter, Katelyn Kampf, isn't happy about it.

Alternet has posted a Carrie Kilman article titled "Anti-Abortion Movement Borrows Tactics from the KKK" which includes the false claim that "Every state in the Deep South -- Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina -- restricts low-income women's access to abortion. Most ban abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy." Are Alternet's editors that ignorant of abortion law?

An Israeli company named BrainStorm Therapeutics hopes to market adult stem cells for the treatment of neurological disorders like ALS and Parkinson's. They choose to work with adult stem cells because "they are also easier to control than embryonic cells, which can give rise to tumours." The leader of their scientific team, Eldad Melamed (who is also a member of the scientific advisory board at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research) also says, "We have learned how to isolate them ... From one donation of bone marrow we can produce millions of stem cells."

Researcher at The Bone Marrow Transplant Program at University of California, San Diego Medical Center, have used adult stem cells in the treatment of Myasthenia Gravis, "a rare neuromuscular autoimmune disease where the body's immune system, which normally protects the body, mistakenly attacks itself. The transmission of nerve impulses to muscles is interrupted, which ultimately prevents the muscles from contracting. Without the proper nerve impulses, muscles that control breathing can't function."

A New York Times film critic David Edelstein discusses his review of the abortion documentary Lake of Fire and a response to it. He writes (language warning), "that there's no way pro-choice activists can win the war of symbols. Whatever your worldview, there is nothing as wrenching as the image of a dead baby. You say an aborted fetus isn't a dead baby? We can debate that issue forever, but the grisly placards held up by anti-abortion activists show fetuses (most taken from Dumpsters) with the unmistakable features of infants."

He also compares pro-choice vs. prolife demonstrators - "But when you watch the demonstrations and the counterdemonstrations in both documentaries, it's the anti-abortion activists who stand gravely, photos of fetuses upraised, sometimes even (in a new tactic) engaging the other side in measured, empathetic tones. The pro-choice demonstrators, on the other hand, are sneering and profane. They shout "(blanking) Fascists" at people who (a) are not behaving like Fascists and (b) probably don't (blank) enough.